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Global cases reach 9.68m as Australia braces for surge – as it happened

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Brazil records nearly 47,000 new cases: while the UK announces easing of quarantining for holidaymakers. This blog has now closed. Follow our live news coverage below

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Fri 26 Jun 2020 20.39 EDTFirst published on Thu 25 Jun 2020 19.32 EDT
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Italian soldiers secure a red zone in Mondragone, near Naples, where new 49 cases of coronavirus infections were confirmed.
Italian soldiers secure a red zone in Mondragone, near Naples, where new 49 cases of coronavirus infections were confirmed. Photograph: EPA
Italian soldiers secure a red zone in Mondragone, near Naples, where new 49 cases of coronavirus infections were confirmed. Photograph: EPA

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Key events

More than 250 repatriated Australians have returned home and will begin a two-week supervised quarantine in an Adelaide hotel.

The passengers arrived at Adelaide Airport on Saturday morning Australian time on a flight from Mumbai via Singapore, reported AAP.

Authorities wore face masks and provided hand sanitiser to each of the passengers before they were transferred to the Pullman hotel in the CBD by bus.

On Friday, South Australia’s state health minister Stephen Wade said a number of Covid-19 cases should be expected among the returning passengers.

He said all those arriving in the state would be tested when they landed and while in isolation.

“What we’ve seen interstate is about five to 10% of travellers returning from the subcontinent have tested positive on their arrival,” Wade said.

“If we see similar figures in SA we could expect up to 25 new cases from these planes.”

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Summary

Let’s take a look at the key developments from the past few hours.

  • The United States recorded its highest single-day of new Covid-19 cases, with 40,870 new infections confirmed, prompting governors in states such as Texas and Florida to reintroduce some restrictions. Donald Trump cancelled a golf trip in response to the news.
  • The global death toll passed 490,00, while 9.7m cases have been recorded worldwide.
  • The UK government said it would change restrictions for travellers, allowing for people to return from popular holiday spots such as Spain, Greece and France.
  • Brazil recorded 46,860 new cases in the past 24 hours.
  • Concern is growing about a rising number Covid-19 cases in Australia, where the virus’s spread had been all but eliminated until recently.
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US records highest single-day increase of pandemic

The United States recorded at least 40,870 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, the largest single-day increase of the pandemic, according to a Reuters tally, bringing the total number of Americans to who have tested positive to at least 2.475 million.

The new record for positive tests comes as several states at the centre of a new surge in infections took steps back from efforts to ease restrictions on businesses.

Governor Greg Abbott ordered bars across Texas to close by midday and required restaurants to limit indoor seating capacity to 50%, while Florida state officials told bars to immediately stop serving alcohol on their premises.

Florida issued its new rules after recording a startling 8,942 new cases of Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by coronavirus, eclipsing the state’s one-day record of 5,511 reached on June 24.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said Friday that Imperial County, east of Los Angeles, has become so overwhelmed by the virus that the state was recommending it issue a strict new stay-at-home order.

Newsom also said that in response to rising Covid-19 hospitalizations he has paused allowing counties to further reopen their economies.

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Covid cases with unknown source rising in Melbourne

There are growing concerns about a surge in cases in Melbourne, where increasing community transmission has put the city at odds with the rest of Australia, where the virus is mostly contained.

Australia has not sought to eliminate the virus – as its neighbours New Zealand have attempted – but its suppression strategy relies heavily on the ability to effectively test and trace.

While testing in Melbourne is at globally impressive levels, The Age newspaper reports that cases with an unknown source are at their highest levels since the pandemic reached Victoria.

The newspaper said more than one third of new cases confirmed between 17 June and 23 June were thought to have been picked up somewhere in the community not linked to identified outbreaks.

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Staying in the US, Reuters reports that the White House is yet to commit to temperature checks for airline passengers.

The vice president, Mike Pence, met with the chief executives of United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, JetBlue Airways and the president of Southwest Airlines at the White House alongside Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Mark Redfield, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other officials.

Airlines want the US government to administer temperature checks to all passengers in a bid to reassure the public.

The Trump administration is open to the idea of having the Transportation Security Administration conduct the tests, but there are still many unanswered questions, including what would happen to passengers who had high fevers and were denied boarding and how to pay for the screening.

Reuters said the CDC does not want to be responsible for travellers with high fevers, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

My colleague in the US, Sam Levin, has this update.

Most US residents will likely be blocked from travelling to the European Union when travel restarts, due to ongoing concerns about the coronavirus, according to multiple reports.

EU officials are in the process of settling on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the block in July, but the US, Brazil and Russia are set to be excluded, Reuters reported. With coronavirus continuing to spread in the US at alarming rates, the possibility of allowing American tourists into the EU is not even part of the ongoing discussion, six diplomats familiar with the talks told the Washington Post.

The list of allowed countries includes China, but on the condition that China allows EU travellers to visit, the New York Times reported.

Various travel restrictions remain across the globe. Greece, for example, requires Covid tests for arrivals from a number of EU countries, including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Self isolation is also mandatory until results come in.

You can read our US politics live blog here.

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Returning to Brazil briefly, the president Jair Bolsonaro has appealed a court ruling which found he was required to wear a face mask in public.

Bolsonaro has been regularly photographed meeting supporters without a mask, despite regulations in Brasilia which state that they are mandatory.

Agence-France Presse reports that the Brazilian attorney general’s officesaid the ruling was redundant since face masks are already mandatory in Brasilia.

“This interference from the courts is unnecessary,” a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office told AFP.

Since the ruling, the president has been sighted wearing a mask in public.

In Australia, there were 36 new cases on Friday, 533 still active. There were six new infections in NSW and 30 in Victoria which has trebled its active cases to 183 in just over a week.

Authorities say seven of Victoria’s cases are linked to known outbreaks, while five are of people in hotel quarantine, five were detected through routine testing, and 13 remain under investigation.

In NSW, a 12-year-old Sydney high school student was among those who tested positive. Queensland also notched up its first case in over a week – a defence force worker returning from Papua New Guinea.

Brazil sees 46,800 cases in 24 hours

Brazil registered 46,860 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours and 990 additional deaths, the Health Ministry said on Friday.

The nation has now registered 1,274,974 total confirmed cases of the virus and 55,961 deaths.

It follows the 39,483 cases recorded in the South American country on Thursday.

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More than 9.68 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 490,118 have died, according to Reuters’ latest tally.

Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.

Summer holidays abroad have been given the green light for UK tourists after the government confirmed the requirement to self-isolate for 14 days upon returning to the UK will be scrapped for a slew of popular destinations.

The Press Association reports that trips to France, Greece and Spain look on the cards after the government confirmed it will revise the quarantine measures at Monday’s review.

In place of the quarantine arrangements will be a traffic light system, with officials placing countries into green, amber and red categories based on the prevalence of coronavirus within each nation’s borders.

Only passengers arriving into the UK from nations in the red category, where the spread of coronavirus is deemed to be high, will be told to self-isolate for two weeks.

Travellers will, however, still have to hand over the address they plan to reside at on their return, no matter which country they are coming back from.

As well as allowing holidays abroad to take place this summer, the government said the changes would provide a “vital lifeline for UK travel operators and those whose jobs rely on the travel industry”.

A government spokeswoman said: “Our public health measures at the border were put in place to manage the risk of imported cases and help prevent a second wave of the virus, and will continue to support our fight against coronavirus.

“Our new risk-assessment system will enable us to carefully open a number of safe travel routes around the world - giving people the opportunity for a summer holiday abroad and boosting the UK economy through tourism and business.

“But we will not hesitate to put on the brakes if any risks re-emerge, and this system will enable us to take swift action to reintroduce self-isolation measures if new outbreaks occur overseas.”

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The San Franscisco mayor, London Breed, says the city is delaying plans to reopen sections of the economy on Monday.

She explained the decision in a series of tweets.

Our reopening process is guided by data and science.

COVID-19 cases are rising throughout CA. We're now seeing a rise in cases in SF too. Our numbers are still low but rising rapidly.

As a result, we're temporarily delaying the re-openings that were scheduled for Monday.

— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 26, 2020

Yesterday we saw 103 cases. On June 15, when we first reopened outdoor dining and in-store retail, we had 20.

At our current rate, the number could double rapidly. If that continues & we don't intervene, we'll be at such a high number that our only option would be to shut down.

— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 26, 2020
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Australia is bracing for the likelihood of more coronavirus cases as hundreds of return travellers land in the coming days, and a worrying surge in infections continues in the state of Victoria.

Although the virus has been all but eliminated in large swathes of the country, the Victorian capital Melbourne continued its run of double-digit case increases with 30 new cases on Friday, while the city also recorded the first Covid-related death in many weeks on Wednesday.

Despite authorities’ concerns in Victoria, others states where community transmission is negligible are beginning to open up their economies. Western Australia’s nightclubs, for example, are among a large list of businesses allowed to reopen this weekend.

Still, Australia’s outgoing chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, said Friday night he was sure that the country’s borders would not fully reopen until a vaccine is found. It followed a prediction from the national carrier, Qantas, that international travel would not resume for Australians until July next year.

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